Track and Field Sports (Athletics) in 2006

World Indoor Championships

At the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) world indoor championships, held in Moscow on March 10–12, 2006, Russia and the U.S. divided up a majority share of the gold medals. American men won 6 of 13 events and 9 medals in all, while Russian women took 7 golds and 13 medals.

Shot putter Reese Hoffa of the U.S. spun out a 21.41-m (70-ft 3-in) first throw—only one rival had thrown farther all winter. His second throw flew 22.11 m (72 ft 61/2 in), the longest indoor shot put since 1989. American triple jumper Walter Davis’s historic win came after some initial confusion. After his first attempt the distance was posted at just 17.30 m (56 ft 9 in). Davis protested that officials had measured from an old mark in the sand. A provisional measurement was made from the spot where Davis actually landed; the video was reviewed; and midway through the competition his mark was updated to 17.73 m (58 ft 2 in), just 10 cm (4 in) short of the world indoor record.

Russian Olesya Krasnomovets won the women’s 400 m in 50.04 sec, the only meet record of the championships. Krasnomovets also ran the third leg for the winning Russian 4 × 400-m team, timed in 3 min 24.91 sec. The gold-medal U.S. men’s 4 × 400-m team posted a time of comparable excellence: 3 min 3.24 sec. Mozambican Maria Mutola, age 33, extended her record for most world indoor championship gold medals to seven with her 800-m win.

Russian high jumper Yelena Slesarenko capitalized on the injury-forced absence of indoor world-record setter Kajsa Bergqvist of Sweden to win with a 2.02-m (6-ft 71/2-in) jump. Conversely, Russian women who set indoor world records earlier in the year lost in upsets. New 1,500-m world-record holder Yelena Soboleva succumbed to the finishing kick of teammate Yuliya Chizhenko and lost by 0.51 sec. Liliya Shobukhova and teammate Olesya Syreva had both broken the old 3,000-m world record in February, but Ethiopian Meseret Defar thoroughly dominated their event in 8 min 38.80 sec.

International Competition

Asafa Powell of Jamaica sprints past American runner-up Tyson Gay in their 100-m race at the IAAF Golden League meeting in Zürich on August 18. Powell’s winning time of 9.77 sec equaled his own world record.Fabrice Coffrini—AFP/Getty ImagesAlthough Jamaican Asafa Powell had held the 100-m world record (9.77 sec) since June 2005, detractors had pointed to his record of failure in the 2004 Sydney Olympics and the IAAF outdoor world championships in 2005, where American Justin Gatlin won. In 2006 Powell silenced his critics. At the outdoor Commonwealth Games, held in March in Melbourne, he easily captured the 100 m (10.03) and anchored Jamaica to gold in the 4 × 100-m relay. Gatlin equaled Powell’s world record in May at the IAAF Super Grand Prix meet in Doha, Qatar, and the table appeared set for an epic clash between the two men. At the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., Gatlin won the first 100-m section in 9.88 sec, and Powell took the second in a wind-aided 9.93 sec. A scheduled meeting in Gateshead, Eng., was scotched by Gatlin’s withdrawal, but Powell ran and again recorded 9.77 sec. In Zürich in August, Powell equaled his world record again. Powell’s only loss came at season’s end in Yokohama, Japan, in September, when he disqualified himself with a false start.

Gatlin did not race after the U.S. championships in June, citing a leg injury. On July 29 it was revealed that he had tested positive for banned exogenous testosterone or its precursors after a relay race in Lawrence, Kan., in April. Gatlin, who faced a lifetime ban because he had tested positive previously in an incident involving doctor-prescribed medication, denied that he had cheated but agreed to the validity of the test. In exchange, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) imposed a maximum suspension of eight years and agreed to consider a reduction should Gatlin provide useful information about doping. Gatlin’s coach, Trevor Graham, claimed that the athlete had been sabotaged by a disgruntled masseur. Gatlin’s attorneys distanced their client from the assertion but vowed to present a defense in 2007. Graham, who had previously coached several athletes who were banned for doping, had also set in motion the investigation of Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) in 2003 by mailing to authorities a syringe containing the then-undetectable steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG). The IAAF announced that it would investigate doping allegations against Graham.

American sprinters rewrote the 200-m all-time lists. Xavier Carter, a 20-year-old Lousiana State University sophomore who turned professional in June after becoming the first athlete to win a 100-m/400-m double at the National Collegiate Athletics Association championships, shocked with a 19.63-sec 200-m win, the second fastest ever, at a meet in Lausanne, Switz. Second in the race (19.70 sec) was 23-year-old Tyson Gay, who improved to 19.68 sec at the IAAF World Athletics Final in Stuttgart, Ger., in September.

Earlier in the Lausanne meet, China’s Liu Xiang had cut the world record in the 110-m hurdles to 12.88 sec. The time, a 0.03-sec improvement on the old world best, amazed all the more because American Dominique Arnold, in second place (12.90 sec), also eclipsed the old mark.

Shot put competition was fierce. Hoffa was undefeated indoors and took the World Athletics Final, the year’s premier IAAF outdoor event, but fellow American Christian Cantwell had the longest throw of the year (22.45 m [73 ft 8 in]) and won 14 of 17 outdoor meets. Adam Nelson, the reigning outdoor world champion, beat both Hoffa and Cantwell at the U.S. championships.

The IAAF revised its $1 million Golden League jackpot format in 2006, splitting $500,000 among athletes who won their event in all six Golden League meets and dividing another $500,000 among those with at least five wins. Powell and Jeremy Wariner of the U.S. won six times and collected $249,999. Wariner won 11 finals at 400 m but, like Powell, lost his final race, failing to finish in Shanghai owing to a muscle strain. Ethiopian distance man Kenenisa Bekele and Panamanian long jumper Irving Saladino each won five Golden League events and claimed $83,333 in prize money on top of awards paid by the individual meets.

In women’s competition, American sprinter Marion Jones returned to victory podiums in 2006 after three seasons in which childbirth and her controversial connections to the BALCO scandal had garnered more headlines than her running. Jones scored six major 100-m wins, including the U.S. title, but lost in Rome and London to the year’s top sprinter, Sherone Simpson of Jamaica. Simpson ran a year-leading 10.82 sec at the Jamaican championships, lost to Jones in Paris, and then won nine straight, including the World Athletics Final and the World Cup. In mid-August news leaked that Jones had tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO) at the U.S. championships. The B-sample test was negative, exonerating Jones, who canceled her remaining races and said she was considering retirement.

Sanya Richards of the U.S. won 17 finals at 400-m. Her only defeat at the distance was in the semifinals of the world indoor championships, when she was ill with food poisoning. Richards won both the World Athletics Final and the World Cup, setting an American record (48.70 sec) and adding a 200-m win in the latter meet. She was the only woman to win six Golden League events and earned a $249,999 jackpot share. Ethiopian distance runner Tirunesh Dibaba arrived at the Golden League final in Berlin with five wins, but she lost a tactically paced 5,000-m race to Defar, who had broken the world record in June. Dibaba left Berlin with only an $83,333 jackpot share.

Isinbayeva, working with a new trainer, Vitaly Petrov, the coach who had guided men’s world-record holder Sergey Bubka, set a world indoor pole-vault record of 4.91 m (16 ft 11/4 in) in her first meet of the year, but she did not advance her outdoor standard. The Russian even incurred two losses. Since July 4, 2004, Isinbayeva had lost just one other meet.

Cross Country and Marathon Running

In January 2006 the organizers of the Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City marathons formed the World Marathon Majors series. They agreed that the five marathons, plus the world championships and Olympic marathons, would constitute a circuit in which runners could earn points for top-five finishes. Because top runners typically raced just two or three marathons a year, the series would split a $1 million prize between the top male and female point scorers on the basis of two years’ worth of performances in the races.

At the halfway point in the 2006–07 edition, Kenyan Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot, the winner in both Boston and Chicago, led the men’s standings. Latvia’s Jelena Prokopcuka led women’s scoring after placing second at Boston and winning in New York City.

Ethiopian great Haile Gebrselassie set a half-marathon world record of 58 min 55 sec in January, but when he targeted the marathon record in London in April, he finished a disappointing ninth in 2 hr 9 min 5 sec. His 2-hr 5-min 56-sec victory in Berlin in September missed Kenyan Paul Tergat’s world record by more than a minute. Gebrselassie’s frustrated third try, at Fukuoka, Japan, in December, resulted in a 2-hr 6-min 52-sec win.

At the world cross country championships in Fukuoka, Bekele won the long- and short-course races for a fifth straight year. This competition marked the last staging of short-course (4-km) races, a fixture for nine years. Bekele said that he would skip the championships in 2007.